Summer means garden-fresh vegetables, and this Slow Cooker Brown Rice Veggie Bowl is a simple way to cook them without heating up the house. I made this with my nephew Jake and even though we ended up tasting it at the end of a long cooking day when we had sampled lots of other things, we gobbled this up and I was excited to have the leftovers another day.

The recipe couldn't be simpler. Start by cooking brown rice in the slow cooker with vegetable stock, spices, and a chopped onion until the rice is nearly done. While the rice cooks, chop up vegetables of your choice; we used asparagus, red bell pepper, and zucchini, but you could also substitute other vegetables that taste good with Feta such as yellow summer squash or green beans. Add the vegetables and cook until they're tender, then stir in some crumbled Feta and serve, topped with a little more feta sprinkled on top.

Put the onion, brown rice, vegetable broth, Greek Seasoning, Spike Seasoning, and dill weed in the slow cooker and cook for 1 1/2 hours on high. (I used Uncle Ben's Brown Rice; other types of brown rice may take longer to cook.)

Cut up about 2 cups of short asparagus pieces.

Also cut up about 1 cup of zucchini pieces and chop up one red bell pepper.

We cooked the rice mixture for 1 1/2 hours, until it was close to done but still had some bite.

If you like your asparagus quite tender, you might want to add it a little sooner than the other vegetables. We cooked all the veggies about 45 minutes, and the asparagus still had a slight crispness that I actually didn't mind at all.

While the vegetables cook, chop up about 4 oz. Feta, more or less to taste.

After 45 minutes stir in most of the crumbled Feta, saving enough to sprinkle a little on the top of each serving, Enjoy!

Chop onion into pieces slightly less than 1/2 inch square. Spray the inside of the slow cooker with non-stick spray or mist with olive oil. Put the chopped onion, rice, vegetable broth, Greek seasoning, Spike Seasoning, and dill weed into the slow cooker and stir. Cook on high for 1 hour 30 minutes, or until the rice is nearly tender but still has a little bite. (If you're using a different type of rice it will probably take longer to cook.)

While the rice cooks, cut up the vegetables into short strips or cubes about 1 inch square. It's important to have vegetables in pieces about the same size so they cook in approximately the same time. When the rice is nearly done, add the vegetables and continue to cook on high for about 45 minutes more. (If you want all the vegetables to be well-done without any crispness, you might want to add the longer-cooking vegetables like asparagus (or green beans) after an hour and 15 minutes, and then add the zucchini (or summer squash) and red bell pepper 15 minutes later.)

While vegetables cook, crumble about 4 oz. of Feta. After 45 minutes, check to see if vegetables are done to your liking. When they are, stir in most of the crumbled Feta, reserving a few tablespoons of Feta to sprinkle some on the top of each serving. Serve hot.

This wasn't bad when it had been refrigerated and reheated, but it was definitely best when freshly made.

The vegetables in this recipe are good low-glycemic choices, but the use of rice makes this limited to Phase 2 or 3 for the South Beach Diet. (I like brown rice in recipes like this, but some charts show that white Uncle Ben's Converted Rice may be lower-glycemic than the brown rice, so feel free to use that if you prefer.)

I chose the South Beach Diet to manage my weight partly so I wouldn't have to count calories, carbs, points, or fat grams, but if you want nutritional information for a recipe, I recommend entering the recipe into Calorie Count, which will calculate it for you. Or if you're a member of Yummly, you can use the Yum button on my site to save the recipe and see the nutritional information there.

More Meatless Monday Dinners with Rice:
(Recipes from other blogs not always South Beach Diet friendly; check ingredients.)

(Want even more recipes? I find these recipes from other blogs using Food Blog Search.)

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